


The Talk Of Paris

by Britpacker



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Episode: s01e04 The Good Soldier, F/M, post episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-14
Updated: 2014-03-14
Packaged: 2018-01-15 17:15:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1312840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Britpacker/pseuds/Britpacker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s useful to him to know what’s being said, and there’s one person whose information the Cardinal has learned he can rely on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Talk Of Paris

**Author's Note:**

> I'm watching The Musketeers and kind of taking it for granted the Cardinal will have replaced Adele with someone a little more sensible. He's not the kind of man I'd expect to make the same mistake twice...

He didn’t have time for this. There was the small matter of a treacherous jailer to attend to, not to mention all the urgent business he had overlooked in the past week, engrossed as he had been in the Savoyard visit. He should return directly to his own residence, to his own duties. This – this was a selfish indulgence.

Yet he could not stop himself.

She was really quite charming, thrown into confusion by his unexpected arrival. Usually he gave her all the notice he could, even if it was just an hour, to primp herself and prepare her household for his discreet appearance at her door. Still, it couldn’t be helped. An hour ago, he had had no intention of coming.

“Will you dine with me?” She shut the parlour door in the face of her manservant, waiting just long enough for his minimal nod of assent to come closer, brushing her small, soft hand against his cheek. “I was hardly expecting to feed a guest but my cook always tries to make me plump, there should be ample for two...”

“Forgive me.” He let his head fall back, granting her access to his cloak clasp. It had become a small ritual, the way she insisted on removing the billowing black robe from his shoulders. He bent his neck ready for her next move, already tingling in anticipation of her fingertips running through his hair.

She threw the black skull cap onto the same chair over which she hung his cloak, ruffling the thick dark grey locks with their natural curl she joked that she so envied. “Gladly, my love,” she murmured tilting her chin. Her bright eyes fluttered shut, her lips puckered and slightly parted. Inviting his kiss.

He accepted with an alacrity that still managed to startle him. Once this would have been his sole reason for coming here, to lose himself in the warmth of her willing flesh; to forget his anxieties and all the burdens of state. That was why a man took a mistress, after all: for the solace of that sweet, complete oblivion, unattainable elsewhere.

He couldn’t remember when it changed, when her mere presence became a balm to his exhausted soul. He simply knew it had and that when he set her back, repressing a smile at her disappointed moue, he would feel better, more comfortable, than he had in far too long.

She dismissed her servants and took charge of their dinner at the door, pointedly selecting a morsel from his plate and chewing it slowly. She sipped wine from his goblet too, and though he smiled it caused a definite twinge deep in his ice-encrusted heart. He couldn’t be quite so paranoid as to assume she might plot his murder. Would he dine with her if he was?

Still, he assured himself he was being perfectly rational, not weakening into trusting her in any way, shape or form. She was aware he had good reason not to trust anyone. And he knew her for an intelligent woman. She would have more sense than to assassinate the man who provided this comfortable house and its discreet attendants for her.

She kept up a flow of conversation while they ate, giving him the snippets of intelligence she had gleaned around Paris. No overheard comment was too insignificant for his notice and she understood the full extent of her usefulness in that regard. He suspected her of relishing the intrigue, of knowing before he could what her milliner had heard some tradesman or other remark to his wife in her shop, or what the scapegrace who sold her fresh flowers every Tuesday overheard on his street corner. 

Information, intelligence, was the source of all his power. Since they’d become intimate he had deliberately limited her more direct activities, but there was no reason his clever mistress couldn’t make herself politically as well as personally useful.

“And the Duke of Savoy has left Paris, I hear,” she remarked with a toss of the head that made her long, shiny tumble of sable hair bounce. “A pity it should be with the laughter of its citizens ringing in his ears!”

He sat back, regarding her with interest. “And I'd hoped his embarrassment might be limited,” he purred, almost truthfully. “It’s common knowledge, his insistence on scouring our prisons for his Spanish spy?”

“He stalked the corridors crying out for his lost chancellor like an abandoned woman pining for her lover, so I heard.” The comparison made his mouth twitch uncontrollably. “Such a pity the King’s own brother-in-law has to make a spectacle of himself before the whole of Paris. How mortified his poor wife must be!”

“Indeed.” 

“And small wonder he flees like a whipped puppy the moment the treaty’s signed.” She pushed her dish aside, cheekily reaching across to steal the last morsel of tender chicken from his. “Did you not like it, Armand? I think Pierre is the finest cook in France, but don’t tell him I said so. He’d ask for more money, or run off to offer his service to the King.”

“I’m glad he meets with your approval.” He ignored the hint, intrigued to see if she would dare press him again. 

He was not surprised when her rosebud mouth pulled up into a pout. She never showed fear of him, though she of all people knew precisely how unyielding – how harsh – his displeasure could be. “Now, Armand, you know I long to hear every detail! People are quite affronted that an honoured guest could behave as ungraciously as Savoy. As if France did him no favour at all by allowing him to marry her king’s own sister! Why, Monsieur Tournier – the seamstress’s husband, you know – declared he wished you’d clapped the Duke in irons for his discourtesy! Who is Savoy, he said, to hurl such calumnies at France?”

“I doubt the Duchess would have approved.” Perhaps her understanding was his greatest protection against perfidy. This woman had no illusions; she had seen with her own eyes what the Cardinal did to those who disappointed him. And she was young, so very young; so vital, determinedly in love with life. 

Gallantry didn’t come easily; it never had, another reason why the scholarly younger son was diverted so readily into the service of the Church those many years ago, but something about her coquettish ways compelled him to make the effort. Lazily he poured her more wine, imitating her own gesture by taking the first sip from her cup for himself. “I dare say she’s thankful to be taking him back to Savoy where he can’t humiliate her or himself any further,” she remarked, brushing her fingers against his on the goblet’s stem. “Marriage to such a bumptious provincial must be painful for her.”

“She appears to love him very much.”

Her nose wrinkled. “He looks like a brute,” she announced, unfazed by his frowning response. “Oh, I was in the crowd when they attended Mass at Notre Dame on Sunday. You’re forgiven for not noticing me, by the way.”

“You’re too gracious.” Flirting was hardly natural either - it was a long time since his destiny had been changed from the military to the ecclesiastic – but sometimes he found it more than worthwhile. She stretched across the table and automatically he responded, leaning toward her as her breath caressed his cheek. 

“You look so grand in your cardinal’s robes, my love,” she murmured, eyes cast demurely down despite her grin, and it took all his formidable self-control not to chuckle. “More regal than the King himself, and I’m not the only one who said it! Do I offend you?”

“No.” The thrill of sacrilegious horror that rippled down his spine was delicious. His seminarian mentors, he considered, would be turning in their tombs.

Under their guidance he had been warned incessantly of the danger – the horror – of original sin. Much too late, he reflected, savouring the irony of it: that those shrivelled celibates in their dusty monastic cells should speak so violently against that which they would never know. From the long-ago night he had first experienced the supreme moment in a woman’s arms Armand Jean du Plessis had known the gift of sexual pleasure could only be the blessing of a truly benevolent deity. He’d have felt nothing but pity for those poor, deluded virgins if their righteous arrogance had not instead demanded his disdain.

His loins felt warm and tender. A pleasant, sticky sensation uncurled in the pit of his stomach. He truly didn’t have time for such indulgence, and yet…

There was another irony, one his mordant wit couldn’t help but appreciate. For so many years he had dedicated himself to achieving his current position, to earning himself that place in the royal counsels which enabled him to advance the glorious destiny he knew to be reserved for France. The King refused to act without his Cardinal’s advice. The embassies and the ministries trembled before him, and not a word of importance could be whispered anywhere in the kingdom without his coming to hear of it. He was powerful. Respected. Feared.

Now he had the business of France in his hands he had come to understand the full weight of its burden on his back. There could be no respite for the man who managed everything; not even a recognition that the omnipotent Cardinal remained a mere man. He had been subsumed by his own myth, trapped in the role he yearned for so long to play.

Except with her. 

When she reached for his hand the friction between her velvety palm and his callused one made his head spin. The Cardinal had no place in her house; here and here alone, he could allow himself to be merely Armand.

It was a blessed relief not to be the omnipotent Scarlet Eminence of France, even if only for an hour.

“Magnificent as you are in your robes, I suppose they’d be a little conspicuous here,” she mused, lacing her fingers through his. He wondered if it was deliberate, the way she brushed the setting of the large Episcopal ring firmly fixed there. “And they do _hide_ so much! They’re all very well for an over-fed flabby abbot I daresay, but for you….”

Admiration. He was familiar with flattery, the cringing obsequiousness much of humanity displayed before men of authority. Perhaps that was why he found himself believing there was something different in her bright, birdlike gaze.

“It would be a sin to conceal so fine a form,” she murmured, swaying around the table when he stood and brushing her lush curves against him from shoulder to hip. She inhaled deeply and unconsciously he matched her, drinking in the soft floral scent of her before her head tipped back, her long lashes swept down and she surrendered herself to his devouring kiss.

Milady de Winter would hurrying to his palace. There was the transfer of a certain prisoner to be arranged and a dozen letters to be written for despatch to ambassadors across Europe: justifying, celebrating and explaining the significance of the treaty. But the luxuriant bubbling sensation in his nether regions spread inexorably, its warmth seeping through his cold blood and thawing a touch of the frost across his icy heart. _To hell with them all._

“Perhaps,” he said, surprised by the low, gravelled timbre of the word as it scraped from his throat, “I shall stay a little longer.”

Her lovely face broke into a smile of genuine delight and she shifted just enough to bring her body more fully into contact with his. He was sure he could feel her heart beating strong and sure against his breastbone and even by candlelight the liquid darkness of her dilated pupils was apparent to an observant man. 

He had never been a fool: he knew the difference between sex and loyalty only too well. But he could not conceive of this woman, intelligent, vital and oh, so perceptive, jeopardising her position, still less her life, by separating one from the other where he was concerned.

“Take me to bed, Armand,” she begged, sliding her arms around his waist. He nodded.

The pleasurable feeling that had been concentrated in his loins swept out to possess every inch of him. He would face the cold reality of his world – _back alley stabbings and murders and all_ , he thought, scornful amusement twisting through his head all wrapped up in Treville’s petulant words – soon enough. For the moment he wanted to forget, and she alone could make him do that.

*

She didn’t cling or complain when he left her bed; simply followed his example, silently dressing and making the best job she could unaided of her passion-tousled hair. Only once did her composure waver: when she snapped the stem of a pristine white rosebud in the vase on her windowsill and tucked it deftly inside his soft, well-worn leather tunic.

She knew better than to make anything of the gesture, merely buttoning his coat over the bloom and pressing up on her toes to plant a kiss against his jaw before opening the bedchamber door and allowing him to descend the stairs first. He had no need to call his men. Attuned to their master’s smallest whim they would be loitering with ears pricked for the sound of his footsteps, the carriage already drawn up to the door. Duty called. He had delayed it too long for his own conscience already.

“Your cloak, my love.” She had it over her arm and the instant he stepped into the parlour she swooped to drape it around his shoulders, nimble fingers making short work of the clasp. The skull cap followed, and he stood as if petrified while she smoothed the wayward curls around it, clucking affectionately all the while. He would never admit it, but she already knew. Here, he wanted to be fussed over, not fawned upon. 

He kissed her once more before leaving, pleased by the look of shock his unexpected gesture left across her glowing face. Richelieu made a mental note not to leave it so long to call again; even an hour with her refreshed his tired spirit, invigorating him for the challenges ahead. That, surely, was why any sensible man took a mistress in the first place.

His carriage jolted unpleasantly - the Duke had been right about one thing if nothing else, he thought, France’s roads really were full of the most appalling potholes, even in the heart of the capital – but with every muscle pleasantly relaxed he found himself quite impervious to discomfort. Within a day Milady would have done her cold-hearted work and be sleeping sound and untroubled in her own – or some other poor fool’s – bed. Treville would provide an escort to take that scoundrel Cluzet wherever he chose. The treaty was signed: Savoy’s fate as good as sealed.

Despite its unpromising start, the day had turned out to be a good one to be Cardinal and first minister of France. And, thanks to a beautiful, brilliant young woman, he admitted, an even better one to be Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu.


End file.
